"The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded." ~ Vance Packard

Columns by Paul Bonneau

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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An alternative news site, Breitbart, had an interesting post today about comments Angela Merkel had made. It’s rare to see such a frank admission of what the ruling class is about:
﻿"Digitisation is a disruptive technological force that brings about deep-seated change and transformation in society. Look at the history of the printing press...

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In earlier times, victors in a war would take the sons of the vanquished rulers back home, to raise them as their own. This provided incentive for the rulers of the now-vassal states not to raise Hell any more (after all, it is the rulers, not the people, who start wars). I wonder if a modification of this hostage concept could not be applied to...

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Back during the American Revolution there were a lot of radical ideas floating around, one of which was “no standing army.” In those days before police existed, the army was what the rulers used to plunder the productive and keep the people under the rulers’ thumbs: “the sharp point of the spear.” The Crown used it that way in...

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Carl Watner wrote an interesting article, back in 2000, concerning an apparent conflict between government by consent, and the difficulty of secession. At first glance, it appears that if government exists through the consent of the people, then secession should be possible and easy. Yet that is not the case today, or ever. How can that be?
He writes,
﻿...

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It’s been noted many times, that to obtain liberty, the first and most important thing that must be freed is one’s own mind. I don’t know who first recognized and stated it. Of course the reverse is true as well; the most important thing for the ruling class to do is to enslave people's minds. And the way that is done is to make those...

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It took me a long, long time to figure out how important self interest was, in motivating people. It’s essentially all there is. Humans do not appear to have much of a natural in-born tendency toward virtues such as truth or decency.
As a parent, I try to warn my son about this; but he thinks I am being too cynical. I suspect that, even though we...

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The Social Justice Warrior (SJW) phenomenon has gotten a lot of discussion lately. There is more to it than first appears.
SJWs operate primarily through social disapproval, although like almost any interest group they also enlist government in their cause, if they can. An example of the latter is telling landlords who they must rent to. Of course there...

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I wrote up a recipe for achieving Panarchy, and posted it on a forum frequented by anarchists. It was intended as a focus for discussion more than an actual plan of events. This is a slight re-write, version 2.
*What is Panarchy?*
Panarchy is that condition, when people are affected by, and can only affect, those political institutions and structures in a...

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The typical arguments about race are so common and predictable, I wonder why people can’t find something different to talk about.
It’s funny how similar the two seemingly disparate positions are, if you think about it.
The so-called “liberal” position, AKA “White Man’s Burden,” is in agreement with what “...

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A thought experiment is a useful device for getting down to the truth of things. For example, Einstein discovered the Special Theory of Relativity through a series of thought experiments; certainly back in those days, there weren’t many trains actually running near the speed of light!
I noticed in another forum, in one of my discussions about rights...

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Bionic Mosquito has written a thoughtful piece on the border/immigration issue. The money quote? “﻿So what does culture have to do with maintaining a libertarian order? This, to me, is quite simple: the less conflict, the less chance that some self-proclaimed and self-pitying disadvantaged group will look to a savior to deliver them from their...

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Every now and then my wife and I get the itch to go into property rental. For example, we look at real estate listings on the Oregon Coast. A duplex would be nice, because we could take one unit for ourselves, and rent the other out. The renter could help watch our place while we were not around, and we might even work out a deal for him to do lawn mowing...

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Oregon has vote-by-mail, and in due time we recently received our ballots in the mail along with a voter’s guide. Since it is an odd-numbered year, all that was on the November ballot were two tax levies, one for libraries, the other for cops.
Like many other states, Oregon has not only the usual dates for primary and general elections, but also some...

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The title of this piece will no doubt strike libertarians as absurd, but after reading Randal John Meyer’s Libertarians Need Not Support the Confederacy, the reason for my title will become clear.
Meyer critiques Phillip Magness’ piece, “What Should Libertarians Think About the Civil War?” Magness...

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A while back, I wrote a little article with some tips on how to get a job. I thought I would write a follow-up, giving a concrete example, and perhaps showing somewhat how I came to that opinion about it.
As an idiot 18-year old, I joined the Marine Corps, in 1968. They tested me along with all the other new recruits, and as a result put me into an MOS of...

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It used to be that the Confederate flag (correctly known as the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia) was not respectable. It was found on dirty pickup trucks, hanging in bars, and painted on the roof of that orange car in “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which was about as silly a show as one could find. The intelligentsia and the chattering...

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No doubt many here have noticed the back-and-forth about “American exceptionalism.” On one side are the ruling class and oafish neocons generally; there is no point wasting our time examining their viewpoint on it. On the other are e.g. Lew Rockwell and his writers, who seem to take the phrase “American exceptionalism” as only a...

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Responding to the door bell, there was a young gal with a vaguely eastern European accent at the door, who immediately started a spiel about how she is a member of Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group, and how they are working on a campaign to stop overuse of antibiotics by farmers. Normally I would enjoy talking with a cute lady, but I was grumpy...

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Sometimes I think people of a certain mindset (*cough* “conservatives” *cough*) would feel lost without someone to fear. Pick any forum with a good crop of ‘em, utter the word “Muslim,” and watch the whole lot turn into instant collectivists, the very people they claim to oppose. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the ruling class...

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I ran into this piece by Ann Jones, someone evidently ashamed of being American.
One can only sigh. Her first error is the collectivist mindset. She seems to find no distinction between the American ruling class and the American peons. No, we are all at fault for the follies of empire, even if we are just a lowly working-class stiff trying to keep...

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In an earlier article, I wrote to counter the notion of ﻿Matt Zwolinski that libertarians ought to dispense with the Non-Aggression Principle. I have since found another article countering ﻿Zwolinski by Jason Kuznicki coming from a different direction, as well as another supporting Zwolinski by Julian Sanchez. Not only do I not find Zwolinski convincing,...

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P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }Sometimes I have to laugh at all the arm-waving that libertarian theorists display. The inclination to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin must be irresistible. I’m referring in particular to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s latest 9,600-word broadside, A Realistic Libertarianism.
1) It is amusing to see...

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There are many, including myself who, having examined how and by whom and for what purpose the Constitution was used to overthrow the clearly superior Articles of Confederation, tend to throw up our hands at any notion of restoring it. Why bother? Our current police state can be traced directly way back to the 1787 Convention, it seems. However, it might...

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The crucial advantage of Panarchy is that it converts aggressive violence into defense.
Most people on the Internet tend to “stick with their own kind”; for example, liberals read only sites like Daily Kos. However, when they venture out and run into those of different persuasions, you always see a battle of competing arguments, and the...

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I vaguely remember when I first discovered logical fallacies (hint: it was not in a government school); I recall being thrilled that there were some boundaries for argumentation that could be used to reject some poor arguments and help find the truth of things. I have long used Stephen Downes’ site as a particularly good exposition of them, since it...

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Why is it that evil proliferates? What mechanism keeps it going? Who is to blame?
Why are there so many wars and occupations? Why such huge amounts of theft (“taxes”, fines, fees and “civil forfeiture”)? Why are so many nonviolent people in jail? What keeps the “War on Some Drugs” going? Why does the police state expand...

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All States provide protection. That is the primary justification for their existence.
The reality can be a bit more complicated, of course.
To be sure, there have been times and places where governments have actually provided protection. George Washington’s army actually provided protection against--well, I guess it was against the government that...

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Ever since I can remember, I have questioned. I suppose I am a contrarian. Whenever a herd of people goes off in one direction, that is prima facie evidence that the direction they are going needs to be questioned even more. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,” as Mark Twain nicely put it....

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The town government just got done patting themselves on the back for a renovated library.
I notice in the “key numbers” sidebar, they left out “Money stolen from taxpayers.” In the story, though, it’s explained that it cost $9.5 million dollars; but if I am not mistaken, this bought not a single book. This sort of thing is...

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Jeffrey Tucker writes a thoughtful (if not concise) article in his Against Libertarian Brutalism, but at the end, one is left unsatisfied. It has the flavor of one big straw man argument, as well as looking like a bit of “divide and conquer,” splitting libertarians unnecessarily into two distinct camps (as if we did not have enough camps...

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I just came across Matt Zwolinski’s article, ﻿Six Reasons Libertarians Should Reject the Non-Aggression Principle. I think he does point out some problems, but comes to the wrong conclusion.
His conclusion: "﻿There comes a point where what you need is not another refinement to the definition of 'aggression' but a radical paradigm shift...

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What are laws?
They are the malodorous droppings left behind by the gang of self-serving, power-mad busybodies who populate our legislatures, meddling lowlifes who presume to know better how to run our lives than we do, ne’er-do-wells with whom decent people wouldn’t normally stoop to associate.
There, I got it out of my system. The above is...

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If you have not yet read Eric Frank Russell’s classic And Then There Were None, it would help understand this article. “MYOB” means “Mind Your Own Business.” Of course, every libertarian and anarchist knows what “NAP” is (although I have always wondered why it has two names, “NAP” and “ZAP,...

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The intended audience for this article are people outside the “gun culture” who nevertheless have decided they might need one for defense; particularly for those who imagine never getting more than one gun. I intend to cut through the gun-nuttery and give you enough information to get started. However far you want to take it from that point is...

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I was reading an article about Roger Williams. The more I learn about him, the more impressed I become.
﻿"Roger Williams was not a man out of time. He belonged to the 17th Century and to Puritans in that century. Yet he was also one of the most remarkable men of his or any century. With absolute faith in the literal truth of the Bible and in his...

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Do you yearn for some thing? I certainly do. Why can’t we go ahead and get the things we yearn for? What’s wrong with that? At some point every person needs to learn to take “yes” for an answer. That’s what Panarchy is, taking “yes” for an answer.
I’m going to talk about “liberals” and “...

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I was reading Mama Liberty’s recent blog post about downsizing government. It occurred to me that it could be determined how much any given individual valued government, by asking them how much they would pay in taxes for it, if taxes really were voluntary.
For example, Joe Blow pays a total of $20,000 this year in taxes. If asked what he’d...

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I have been discussing with others the Snowden revelations, and an article by industry professional Bruce Schneier came up, which is well worth the read. It brings to mind an event in my own past.
I was once a computer hardware designer for a small company that put out state-of-the-art machines for scientific processing, dealing with collecting and...

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In the current run-up to Revolution (or Secession, or Rebellion, or whatever it is we seem to be running into shortly), I have noticed on blogs a significant increase in the expression of racism. This is usually combined with assertion that the thing we will be facing soon is a race war.
I believe this take on things is a mistake on several levels; but...

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The Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe had to wear a yellow Star of David. The intention was to mark them as inferiors, subhumans, slaves, and to separate them from the rest of the population. Are there other, perhaps less obvious badges of slavery? Do we wear any such, without even being aware of it?
We might consider the antebellum American slaves. At that...

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I was reading Judge Napolitano’s article describing the ﻿Amash-Conyers amendment attempting to stop wholesale NSA snooping of Americans, and also the letter from Edward Snowden’s father to Obama. One can understand both of these initiatives at three different levels.
The first level is a straightforward interpretation: an honest attempt by...

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A while back, lots of conservatives got excited about something called the Laffer Curve. It’s the notion that stolen government loot will be zero at tax rates of both 0% and 100%, therefore looting is maximized at some rate in between. Not the most earth-shattering realization, I admit, but still, if you read about it, you come off with a strange...

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It’s a wonder how worked up people can get themselves over a little melanin in skin. Most often it is just a joke, but it can become tedious at times.
Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not the only race hucksters, although they come immediately to mind when you hear the term. There are armies of race hucksters in government, the folks who have...

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I was listening to the interview of Mike Vanderboegh by my friends Michael Dean and Neema Vedadi, and made an initial response on Libertarian Enterprise. Since naming that response “How To Not Be a Collectivist” bothered me a bit (you can detect my uneasiness in that article), I have thought some more about it; here are my cogitations.
First I...

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I was just reading “Liberty in the Tenticular State” by Charles Cooke and had a few comments about how confusing issues get, to people with a rights-based (not to mention Constitutionalist) view of reality. There is a better way.
First interesting item in the article was this: “﻿So complete has been the destruction of liberty’s...

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I was listening to Stewart Rhodes' stirring speech in Connecticut and finding myself in (reluctant) disagreement.
He was talking about all the sacrifices made by men in WWII and other wars, and yet how their efforts were betrayed by the destruction of liberty back home.
Now setting aside for the moment the question of what those men were actually...

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Humans have a strange inclination to build their fundamental political beliefs and institutions on a foundation of lies and fantasies. One would think something so important should have a better connection to reality! Some of these lies and fantasies are: democracy, the republic, representative government, constitutions, government "help," and...

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When I go outside this time of year, I get cold. I compensate by getting a coat on, and then go about my business. This is the standard way of dealing with forces of nature. I don’t spend a lot of time lying in bed wishing it weren’t cold. I have better things to do with my time.
Why is government any different?
Government is just a gang of...

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It’s not unusual to see here on Strike The Root articles defending or promoting anarchy, particularly the anarcho-capitalist variety. Yay, team!
Anarcho-capitalism is a good answer--for anarcho-capitalists. Not so good for, say, communitarians, though; nor for liberals, conservatives, or even anarcho-other-than-capitalists.
It’s an answer,...

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By now it seems everything that could be said about Newtown, has already been said--multiple times in some cases. Here’s an attempt to bring something new to the discussion.
Why are people horrified? When I sit back and think about this, a few things come to mind.
First is the thing that virtually every parent must feel: the dread that they may...

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Michael Rozeff made a very lengthy blog post bemoaning the loss of privacy, here.
I sometimes wonder when people go to such lengths to get their point across. Could it be that the arm-waving indicates the position is not really all that well thought out, or that it is internally inconsistent? Aren’t simple truths, well, simple?
I should say that I...

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Himalayan blackberries, ﻿Rubus armeniacus, were introduced into America in 1885 as a berry crop, but escaped cultivation and have become a pest plant in the Pacific Northwest particularly. One day I was visiting my parents when I found Dad out doing one of the usual tasks around here, beating back the blackberries. He was calmly, quietly snipping 4-inch...

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I remember the day my Dad came home driving one of the earliest Toyota Coronas sold over here, rather than his usual Ford. It was amusing to see this big man in a little car. It was also strange to see him driving a Japanese product since he had fought in Iwo Jima and Okinawa during the war. One might naturally think those awful conflicts would have...

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I just got done reading another article whacking the practice of voting. This one declares that voting is a fool's game. One begins to wonder if this is a productive tack. How many voters are convinced by such arguments? Aren’t we just “preaching to the choir”? Are we hacking at the branches of evil, or striking the root?
I have made...

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Day after day we read that cops or other minions of the ruling class never suffer any legal consequences for various and sundry vile actions on their part. No doubt you can find an example today and every day among the Strike The Root articles.
One working definition of government might as well be, “those people for whom the laws do not, in...

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I was talking to a friend who was worried and depressed about NDAA and “rendition” and that sort of thing. She had been reading a lot on lewrockwell.com (or maybe even prisonplanet.com). It struck me that this normally-happy woman was actually worried, as if she feared imminent arrest.
Imagine you own the most reliable car in the world;...

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Dear Naomi Wolf,
I read your article about the Aurora theater shootings.
While I have enjoyed a lot of your work in the past, I must say that I believe you have missed the boat with this one. It seems to run counter to your normal tendencies of questioning government tyranny. It’s also not very realistic.
For one thing, I think...

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When a fiat currency goes into heavy inflation, the tendency of users of that currency is to convert it into something else that has a more stable value, so their holdings don’t evaporate into thin air. People will either buy gold or silver, or convert to another more stable fiat currency, or if those options aren’t available, will simply buy...

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Here and there I have noticed some strange treatment of the Boston Tea Party among libertarians, a sort of shame that such an event has normally been celebrated in our culture. Were the participants bad people? Should we be ashamed of them?
One example of such treatment is Charles Adams' exposition of early American taxation:
Recently...

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In my recent Facebook escapades, this challenge came up: “My longstanding challenge to create a society larger than a commune or a small town that functions well without any government is still open. Create one, and you'll shut me up quick. Until then, I'm going to refer to your notions as ‘unproven theories’ at best, and ‘utter...

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Libertarians (and anarchists) like to think of themselves as enlightened beings. I get to see a nice cross-section of them on Facebook, many having something like “voluntaryist” as part of their Facebook name. The strange thing though, is that their behavior is almost indistinguishable from anyone else over there.
Yes, they may have at...

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When I was in my teens and twenties, John Wayne used to annoy the Hell out of me. Nowadays I see that that was so because I was ignorant. There was actually a lot I could learn from his movies, and I was thoughtlessly rejecting his message out of hand.
One standard plot element of his films that I found completely implausible was a conflict he would...

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Yet again the puppet masters have gotten all the puppets jumping about in a frenzy. It makes me wonder whether there is actually reason to get exercised about this bill.
Certainly, the notion that the U.S. government will protect the Internet from attacks is absurd, given that the source of all the most serious attacks (of which CISPA...

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The sign in the window said, “No Firearms Allowed Inside”.
First thing that came to my mind was, “Great, now what am I supposed to do? Leave my gun out here lying on the sidewalk?” My next thought was, “I am trying to do business with morons.”
I was in front of the local office of my ISP provider, a company...

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It is clearly fun to make fun of people. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be such a popular pastime.
One can imagine why we are prone to this kind of behavior. For example, in the old days, if you wanted to slaughter another tribe and steal their women and take all their stuff, dehumanizing them first was eminently sensible. It erases all inhibitions...

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I don’t know what it is about the word “property.” Every time I think about it, the thought seems to include such state baggage as titles, and places to record those titles like county courthouses, and arguments in court over who owns it, and state regulations on transferring it, and even taxes! The latest big fuss over “...

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I had earlier addressed the question of tolerance of anarchists, in this article. At some point, it occurred to me to actually ask the question. After all, we have these wonderful forum tools that include polls!
I went to my favorite gun forum, one I recommend, by the way, Oleg Volk’s Gun Rights Media. On a sub-board called “Ethics...

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When I first started writing on this subject (see here, here, and here), I was mostly shooting in the dark. Subsequent reading has yet again proven the old saying, from Ecclesiastes, that there is nothing new under the sun; that what I wrote has been thought of before. This article will attempt to collect and connect these themes.
The first...

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Claire Wolfe recently wrote a column, People Who Don’t Think. I think she needs to rethink this, heh heh.
I have the utmost respect for Claire. I have some of her books, and she’s influenced me tremendously. However, I believe she may have gone down the wrong path with this idea, which I consider to be both politically and personally...

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There seems to be a lot of confusion on this point. Many people believe they are living in a state of liberty, while others don’t think so. How can you know for sure? I have devised a simple test that, I believe, can be used to determine when you have liberty.
I am here following the distinction that some use, between freedom and liberty:...

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I was reading a chapter of Jim Corbett’s My India, when I ran into an illuminating clue about the range of possible judicial solutions where freedom exists. Most people seem to imagine free market justice working more or less like our current system, just better and cheaper and more fair. But would it actually look anything like that?
To get...

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Every once in a while, I get tired of arguments around here, trying in some way or other to justify freedom and liberty. One can go overboard with this stuff.
After all, does one need a PhD in Philosophy to understand freedom? Of course not. Everybody already understands it. It’s just doing whatever the Hell you want to do. No justification is...

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The next tool we are going to examine is the tyrant’s use and encouragement of hatred among those he wishes to govern. This is a part of the “divide and conquer” or “divide and rule” strategy.
Of the elements mentioned in the Wikipedia article, the most important are
1) ﻿creating or encouraging divisions among...

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It occurred to me that it might be useful to dissect the tools that tyrants use to keep us under their thumbs. Knowing what they are and how they use them can help us defend against them. I don’t know if anyone has systematically gone over this before. If someone knows of such an effort, please comment below.
The first tool (ignoring...

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Most of us have grown up in an era of substantial job growth (funded largely by low interest rate-driven malinvestment, but no need go get into that now). Any fool could make a million. Well, the party is over, and mindsets that might have been workable then, have now become harmful to self-preservation. It’s time to examine this point.
...

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I was just reading how anarcho-syndicalists are so bad, that they are even worse than the state.
Wow, that is something else. We have no idea what things are going to come about at this end of empire, what our true enemies will be; but we are already searching for other dragons to slay. The more obscure, the better!
The article, by...

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I was reading Lawrence Ludlow’s excellent series on Voluntarist schooling when I came upon this statement: “﻿For many busy parents, home-schooling is not an option – despite the extraordinary success of home-schooled children. Many parents do not have the time, skills, and resources needed by their children to flourish....

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Dear Senator Enzi,
I was reading Robert Higgs' article Consent of the Governed? when I suddenly realized that I have misplaced my copy of my Social Contract. You know, the signed agreement between myself and the federal government, allowing the latter to rule me? I have looked everywhere and cannot find it.
Would you please make a copy of...

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I once owned a small farm that had gone to the weeds. On this farm was a shed, the kind one sees on working farms with one side open and tractors parked inside, or hay bales stacked. For some reason I woke up this morning, thinking about that shed.
When friends came over, we’d be out walking around and they’d invariably say...

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It’s funny how human beings can become so attached to a meme, that they can’t even imagine life without it. As the Wikipedia article on the secret ballot puts it, “﻿Today the practice of casting secret ballots is so commonplace that most voters would not consider that any other method might be used.” It is somehow imagined to...

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One of the Strike The Root guest editors linked to an article a few days back, Steve Horwitz’ "Don’t Leave Me Alone". This was an opportunity for a little personal edification. One question that arose was, “What is a libertarian?”
Apparently the answer is, “Who the Hell knows?” In other words, it...

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I was lying in bed last night, thinking how frustrating it can be to live in America today. So much potential, yet squandered for the basest purposes! I started thinking of reasons America is both great and lousy at the same time. Here is a rough list I came up with:
America - THE GOOD
Freedom: It’s still very popular here, and...

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Recently, STR linked to a video of “The Story of Your Enslavement”. While I largely agree with his view on this, and while I think his exposition is effective in breaking through all the lies we have used to enslaved ourselves, still there are some points about it that bother me.
What Molyneux is using here, is analogy. Analogy is a...

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Responding to Per’s recent column, I will quote a couple of passages:
“...﻿I have argued exclusively that a full-scale alliance (in the sense of an integrated, all-encompassing, and unified movement) is both counterproductive and impossible.”
I have to agree, as far as that goes. But there are a few problems with...

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Nor are there any minarchists or anarchists.
In this brouhaha stirred up by Per Bylund, some strange lines of argument have appeared. Here is an example:
----------------
﻿"There are a huge number who would reject abolishing the state while consenting to leave us alone." [quoted from previous comment]
That is redundant...

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I thought I’d update the previous article I wrote on this subject. This was prompted by, among other things, an article about “Shooting on a Shoestring" also posted at lewrockwell.com.
The author likes the SKS for a defense carbine. They certainly qualify for shooting on a shoestring, and there is an undeniable utility in a semi-...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Have you ever noticed how many people have bought into this notion that America is a republic? It’s amusing in a forum to use the word “democracy”; invariably, someone huffily states we have a Constitutional Republic, as if that statement closed the matter for good. How silly is that?
The Wikipedia article for the...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Following a comment from the editor, it occurred to me to take a look at the split between those who advocate nonviolent resistance to tyranny, and those who would not thus limit themselves. Is it actually necessary for this split to exist?
I should first say, that anyone who has a favorite online source that addresses this issue,...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture sometimes, when reading depressing articles like this or like some I myself have written in the past. Listening to Alex Jones for any length of time can send one into despair (one of the reasons I don’t do that).
When I was running the Wyoming Liberty Index, I noticed that even in...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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One bit of indoctrination I have found it difficult to shake, is the notion that only other countries have political prisoners. Perhaps you have the same mental knee-jerk reaction that I do, when I hear that phrase: people rotting in prisons in Cuba, or some other banana republic run by a military honcho, or Burma, or North Korea. But are such examples...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s just funny what a complete cluster-f*ck government can make of something if you simply let them have their way. I suppose that is normal with all parasitic organisms; they could live just fine if they knew when to stop their depredations--but they never do. They literally cannot avoid the self-destructive course.
The latest...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I wonder how many of our readers ever participated in an election, in which their vote was the decisive one? The chances are pretty small, mathematically. But they are actually even smaller than the math predicts!
Let’s imagine a race between Statist Candidate A and Statist Candidate B, and in the vote count, they differ by only...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I've read lots of articles about the disutility of voting. It's not like there are a shortage of them! Here's my take on it, perhaps a bit different than most (my title refers to winning or losing from the voter's point of view, not the politician's).
At my age, 60, I've seen a lot of elections. Much of my life was spent in frantically...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Anarchy is often all around us, yet we do not see it. Perhaps we have been conditioned by the state propaganda organs too well. One recent event, perhaps the most significant anarchic event ever, was the huge ramp-up in sales of military-pattern rifles starting on Obama's election in November 2008 and tapering back down to normal in the...

By Paul Bonneau.
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You know who you are. You're a "philosophical libertarian" or "philosophical anarchist." You might think of yourself as a bit bookish or intellectual. You tend to express yourself through words rather than action.
You have a philosophical agreement, perhaps including some discomfort, with the right to bear arms. You either...

By Paul Bonneau.
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The tenacity of the meme, that government is here to help us and protect us, is hard to understand. All evidence throughout history points in the opposite direction--that government is here to prey on us, and that if there is anything we need protection from, it is our own governments. Why do people cling to this harmful meme?
A...

By Paul Bonneau
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What if you woke up one morning, no longer believing you had a "right to life" - whatever you mean by that? How would your life change?
Some have contended that one would immediately commit suicide! Or they somehow imagine that people would no longer defend their lives from killers, passively awaiting their fate. Of course...

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Have you ever wondered what freedom would look like? The big picture, I mean; not just like what it would be like to smoke some pot without being beat up by thugs.
Strangely enough, any realistic picture of freedom will have to include statists in some respect! It's not like we can take any remaining statists out back and put a bullet in their head; that option, although...

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I have read many pro-freedom articles on Strike The Root, but one of the strangest was Jim Davies' piece "Handouts." Somehow, I had a hard time reconciling what I was reading there, with Thoreau's quote at the top of the page. Who'd-a thunk it? That we could hack at the root of evil by profiting from it? I mean, how cool is that?
Still, I thought I would try to apply a...

By Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
The tenacity of the meme, that government is here to help us and protect us, is hard to understand. All evidence throughout history points in the opposite direction--that government is here to prey on us, and that if there is anything we need protection from, it is our own governments. Why do people cling to this harmful meme?
A...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
I thought I’d update the previous article I wrote on this subject. This was prompted by, among other things, an article about “Shooting on a Shoestring" also posted at lewrockwell.com.
The author likes the SKS for a defense carbine. They certainly qualify for shooting on a shoestring, and there is an undeniable utility in a semi-...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It occurred to me that it might be useful to dissect the tools that tyrants use to keep us under their thumbs. Knowing what they are and how they use them can help us defend against them. I don’t know if anyone has systematically gone over this before. If someone knows of such an effort, please comment below.
The first tool (ignoring...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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All States provide protection. That is the primary justification for their existence.
The reality can be a bit more complicated, of course.
To be sure, there have been times and places where governments have actually provided protection. George Washington’s army actually provided protection against--well, I guess it was against the government that...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }Sometimes I have to laugh at all the arm-waving that libertarian theorists display. The inclination to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin must be irresistible. I’m referring in particular to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s latest 9,600-word broadside, A Realistic Libertarianism.
1) It is amusing to see...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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An alternative news site, Breitbart, had an interesting post today about comments Angela Merkel had made. It’s rare to see such a frank admission of what the ruling class is about:
﻿"Digitisation is a disruptive technological force that brings about deep-seated change and transformation in society. Look at the history of the printing press...

Column by Paul Bonneau
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In my recent Facebook escapades, this challenge came up: “My longstanding challenge to create a society larger than a commune or a small town that functions well without any government is still open. Create one, and you'll shut me up quick. Until then, I'm going to refer to your notions as ‘unproven theories’ at best, and ‘utter...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s just funny what a complete cluster-f*ck government can make of something if you simply let them have their way. I suppose that is normal with all parasitic organisms; they could live just fine if they knew when to stop their depredations--but they never do. They literally cannot avoid the self-destructive course.
The latest...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Day after day we read that cops or other minions of the ruling class never suffer any legal consequences for various and sundry vile actions on their part. No doubt you can find an example today and every day among the Strike The Root articles.
One working definition of government might as well be, “those people for whom the laws do not, in...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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When I first started writing on this subject (see here, here, and here), I was mostly shooting in the dark. Subsequent reading has yet again proven the old saying, from Ecclesiastes, that there is nothing new under the sun; that what I wrote has been thought of before. This article will attempt to collect and connect these themes.
The first...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Here and there I have noticed some strange treatment of the Boston Tea Party among libertarians, a sort of shame that such an event has normally been celebrated in our culture. Were the participants bad people? Should we be ashamed of them?
One example of such treatment is Charles Adams' exposition of early American taxation:
Recently...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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When a fiat currency goes into heavy inflation, the tendency of users of that currency is to convert it into something else that has a more stable value, so their holdings don’t evaporate into thin air. People will either buy gold or silver, or convert to another more stable fiat currency, or if those options aren’t available, will simply buy...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I remember the day my Dad came home driving one of the earliest Toyota Coronas sold over here, rather than his usual Ford. It was amusing to see this big man in a little car. It was also strange to see him driving a Japanese product since he had fought in Iwo Jima and Okinawa during the war. One might naturally think those awful conflicts would have...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s not unusual to see here on Strike The Root articles defending or promoting anarchy, particularly the anarcho-capitalist variety. Yay, team!
Anarcho-capitalism is a good answer--for anarcho-capitalists. Not so good for, say, communitarians, though; nor for liberals, conservatives, or even anarcho-other-than-capitalists.
It’s an answer,...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Humans have a strange inclination to build their fundamental political beliefs and institutions on a foundation of lies and fantasies. One would think something so important should have a better connection to reality! Some of these lies and fantasies are: democracy, the republic, representative government, constitutions, government "help," and...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was listening to the interview of Mike Vanderboegh by my friends Michael Dean and Neema Vedadi, and made an initial response on Libertarian Enterprise. Since naming that response “How To Not Be a Collectivist” bothered me a bit (you can detect my uneasiness in that article), I have thought some more about it; here are my cogitations.
First I...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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A while back, lots of conservatives got excited about something called the Laffer Curve. It’s the notion that stolen government loot will be zero at tax rates of both 0% and 100%, therefore looting is maximized at some rate in between. Not the most earth-shattering realization, I admit, but still, if you read about it, you come off with a strange...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was reading Judge Napolitano’s article describing the ﻿Amash-Conyers amendment attempting to stop wholesale NSA snooping of Americans, and also the letter from Edward Snowden’s father to Obama. One can understand both of these initiatives at three different levels.
The first level is a straightforward interpretation: an honest attempt by...

Column by Paul Bonneua.
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I just came across Matt Zwolinski’s article, ﻿Six Reasons Libertarians Should Reject the Non-Aggression Principle. I think he does point out some problems, but comes to the wrong conclusion.
His conclusion: "﻿There comes a point where what you need is not another refinement to the definition of 'aggression' but a radical paradigm shift...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Jeffrey Tucker writes a thoughtful (if not concise) article in his Against Libertarian Brutalism, but at the end, one is left unsatisfied. It has the flavor of one big straw man argument, as well as looking like a bit of “divide and conquer,” splitting libertarians unnecessarily into two distinct camps (as if we did not have enough camps...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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There are many, including myself who, having examined how and by whom and for what purpose the Constitution was used to overthrow the clearly superior Articles of Confederation, tend to throw up our hands at any notion of restoring it. Why bother? Our current police state can be traced directly way back to the 1787 Convention, it seems. However, it might...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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No doubt many here have noticed the back-and-forth about “American exceptionalism.” On one side are the ruling class and oafish neocons generally; there is no point wasting our time examining their viewpoint on it. On the other are e.g. Lew Rockwell and his writers, who seem to take the phrase “American exceptionalism” as only a...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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A while back, I wrote a little article with some tips on how to get a job. I thought I would write a follow-up, giving a concrete example, and perhaps showing somewhat how I came to that opinion about it.
As an idiot 18-year old, I joined the Marine Corps, in 1968. They tested me along with all the other new recruits, and as a result put me into an MOS of...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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The Social Justice Warrior (SJW) phenomenon has gotten a lot of discussion lately. There is more to it than first appears.
SJWs operate primarily through social disapproval, although like almost any interest group they also enlist government in their cause, if they can. An example of the latter is telling landlords who they must rent to. Of course there...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Back during the American Revolution there were a lot of radical ideas floating around, one of which was “no standing army.” In those days before police existed, the army was what the rulers used to plunder the productive and keep the people under the rulers’ thumbs: “the sharp point of the spear.” The Crown used it that way in...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I once owned a small farm that had gone to the weeds. On this farm was a shed, the kind one sees on working farms with one side open and tractors parked inside, or hay bales stacked. For some reason I woke up this morning, thinking about that shed.
When friends came over, we’d be out walking around and they’d invariably say...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Dear Senator Enzi,
I was reading Robert Higgs' article Consent of the Governed? when I suddenly realized that I have misplaced my copy of my Social Contract. You know, the signed agreement between myself and the federal government, allowing the latter to rule me? I have looked everywhere and cannot find it.
Would you please make a copy of...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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In an earlier article, I wrote to counter the notion of ﻿Matt Zwolinski that libertarians ought to dispense with the Non-Aggression Principle. I have since found another article countering ﻿Zwolinski by Jason Kuznicki coming from a different direction, as well as another supporting Zwolinski by Julian Sanchez. Not only do I not find Zwolinski convincing,...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Libertarians (and anarchists) like to think of themselves as enlightened beings. I get to see a nice cross-section of them on Facebook, many having something like “voluntaryist” as part of their Facebook name. The strange thing though, is that their behavior is almost indistinguishable from anyone else over there.
Yes, they may have at...

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I have read many pro-freedom articles on Strike The Root, but one of the strangest was Jim Davies' piece "Handouts." Somehow, I had a hard time reconciling what I was reading there, with Thoreau's quote at the top of the page. Who'd-a thunk it? That we could hack at the root of evil by profiting from it? I mean, how cool is that?
Still, I thought I would try to apply a...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was just reading “Liberty in the Tenticular State” by Charles Cooke and had a few comments about how confusing issues get, to people with a rights-based (not to mention Constitutionalist) view of reality. There is a better way.
First interesting item in the article was this: “﻿So complete has been the destruction of liberty’s...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was reading an article about Roger Williams. The more I learn about him, the more impressed I become.
﻿"Roger Williams was not a man out of time. He belonged to the 17th Century and to Puritans in that century. Yet he was also one of the most remarkable men of his or any century. With absolute faith in the literal truth of the Bible and in his...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was lying in bed last night, thinking how frustrating it can be to live in America today. So much potential, yet squandered for the basest purposes! I started thinking of reasons America is both great and lousy at the same time. Here is a rough list I came up with:
America - THE GOOD
Freedom: It’s still very popular here, and...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was reading Lawrence Ludlow’s excellent series on Voluntarist schooling when I came upon this statement: “﻿For many busy parents, home-schooling is not an option – despite the extraordinary success of home-schooled children. Many parents do not have the time, skills, and resources needed by their children to flourish....

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Most of us have grown up in an era of substantial job growth (funded largely by low interest rate-driven malinvestment, but no need go get into that now). Any fool could make a million. Well, the party is over, and mindsets that might have been workable then, have now become harmful to self-preservation. It’s time to examine this point.
...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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The Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe had to wear a yellow Star of David. The intention was to mark them as inferiors, subhumans, slaves, and to separate them from the rest of the population. Are there other, perhaps less obvious badges of slavery? Do we wear any such, without even being aware of it?
We might consider the antebellum American slaves. At that...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I have been discussing with others the Snowden revelations, and an article by industry professional Bruce Schneier came up, which is well worth the read. It brings to mind an event in my own past.
I was once a computer hardware designer for a small company that put out state-of-the-art machines for scientific processing, dealing with collecting and...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Claire Wolfe recently wrote a column, People Who Don’t Think. I think she needs to rethink this, heh heh.
I have the utmost respect for Claire. I have some of her books, and she’s influenced me tremendously. However, I believe she may have gone down the wrong path with this idea, which I consider to be both politically and personally...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s a wonder how worked up people can get themselves over a little melanin in skin. Most often it is just a joke, but it can become tedious at times.
Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not the only race hucksters, although they come immediately to mind when you hear the term. There are armies of race hucksters in government, the folks who have...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Himalayan blackberries, ﻿Rubus armeniacus, were introduced into America in 1885 as a berry crop, but escaped cultivation and have become a pest plant in the Pacific Northwest particularly. One day I was visiting my parents when I found Dad out doing one of the usual tasks around here, beating back the blackberries. He was calmly, quietly snipping 4-inch...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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The next tool we are going to examine is the tyrant’s use and encouragement of hatred among those he wishes to govern. This is a part of the “divide and conquer” or “divide and rule” strategy.
Of the elements mentioned in the Wikipedia article, the most important are
1) ﻿creating or encouraging divisions among...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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When I was in my teens and twenties, John Wayne used to annoy the Hell out of me. Nowadays I see that that was so because I was ignorant. There was actually a lot I could learn from his movies, and I was thoughtlessly rejecting his message out of hand.
One standard plot element of his films that I found completely implausible was a conflict he would...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Dear Naomi Wolf,
I read your article about the Aurora theater shootings.
While I have enjoyed a lot of your work in the past, I must say that I believe you have missed the boat with this one. It seems to run counter to your normal tendencies of questioning government tyranny. It’s also not very realistic.
For one thing, I think...

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Have you ever wondered what freedom would look like? The big picture, I mean; not just like what it would be like to smoke some pot without being beat up by thugs.
Strangely enough, any realistic picture of freedom will have to include statists in some respect! It's not like we can take any remaining statists out back and put a bullet in their head; that option, although...

By Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
You know who you are. You're a "philosophical libertarian" or "philosophical anarchist." You might think of yourself as a bit bookish or intellectual. You tend to express yourself through words rather than action.
You have a philosophical agreement, perhaps including some discomfort, with the right to bear arms. You either...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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One bit of indoctrination I have found it difficult to shake, is the notion that only other countries have political prisoners. Perhaps you have the same mental knee-jerk reaction that I do, when I hear that phrase: people rotting in prisons in Cuba, or some other banana republic run by a military honcho, or Burma, or North Korea. But are such examples...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s funny how human beings can become so attached to a meme, that they can’t even imagine life without it. As the Wikipedia article on the secret ballot puts it, “﻿Today the practice of casting secret ballots is so commonplace that most voters would not consider that any other method might be used.” It is somehow imagined to...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Ever since I can remember, I have questioned. I suppose I am a contrarian. Whenever a herd of people goes off in one direction, that is prima facie evidence that the direction they are going needs to be questioned even more. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,” as Mark Twain nicely put it....

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Every now and then my wife and I get the itch to go into property rental. For example, we look at real estate listings on the Oregon Coast. A duplex would be nice, because we could take one unit for ourselves, and rent the other out. The renter could help watch our place while we were not around, and we might even work out a deal for him to do lawn mowing...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I've read lots of articles about the disutility of voting. It's not like there are a shortage of them! Here's my take on it, perhaps a bit different than most (my title refers to winning or losing from the voter's point of view, not the politician's).
At my age, 60, I've seen a lot of elections. Much of my life was spent in frantically...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Responding to Per’s recent column, I will quote a couple of passages:
“...﻿I have argued exclusively that a full-scale alliance (in the sense of an integrated, all-encompassing, and unified movement) is both counterproductive and impossible.”
I have to agree, as far as that goes. But there are a few problems with...

Column by Paul Bonneau
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Recently, STR linked to a video of “The Story of Your Enslavement”. While I largely agree with his view on this, and while I think his exposition is effective in breaking through all the lies we have used to enslaved ourselves, still there are some points about it that bother me.
What Molyneux is using here, is analogy. Analogy is a...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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One of the Strike The Root guest editors linked to an article a few days back, Steve Horwitz’ "Don’t Leave Me Alone". This was an opportunity for a little personal edification. One question that arose was, “What is a libertarian?”
Apparently the answer is, “Who the Hell knows?” In other words, it...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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In earlier times, victors in a war would take the sons of the vanquished rulers back home, to raise them as their own. This provided incentive for the rulers of the now-vassal states not to raise Hell any more (after all, it is the rulers, not the people, who start wars). I wonder if a modification of this hostage concept could not be applied to...

Column by Paul Bonneau
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I was just reading how anarcho-syndicalists are so bad, that they are even worse than the state.
Wow, that is something else. We have no idea what things are going to come about at this end of empire, what our true enemies will be; but we are already searching for other dragons to slay. The more obscure, the better!
The article, by...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was reading a chapter of Jim Corbett’s My India, when I ran into an illuminating clue about the range of possible judicial solutions where freedom exists. Most people seem to imagine free market justice working more or less like our current system, just better and cheaper and more fair. But would it actually look anything like that?
To get...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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When I go outside this time of year, I get cold. I compensate by getting a coat on, and then go about my business. This is the standard way of dealing with forces of nature. I don’t spend a lot of time lying in bed wishing it weren’t cold. I have better things to do with my time.
Why is government any different?
Government is just a gang of...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was reading Mama Liberty’s recent blog post about downsizing government. It occurred to me that it could be determined how much any given individual valued government, by asking them how much they would pay in taxes for it, if taxes really were voluntary.
For example, Joe Blow pays a total of $20,000 this year in taxes. If asked what he’d...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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If you have not yet read Eric Frank Russell’s classic And Then There Were None, it would help understand this article. “MYOB” means “Mind Your Own Business.” Of course, every libertarian and anarchist knows what “NAP” is (although I have always wondered why it has two names, “NAP” and “ZAP,...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Why is it that evil proliferates? What mechanism keeps it going? Who is to blame?
Why are there so many wars and occupations? Why such huge amounts of theft (“taxes”, fines, fees and “civil forfeiture”)? Why are so many nonviolent people in jail? What keeps the “War on Some Drugs” going? Why does the police state expand...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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The crucial advantage of Panarchy is that it converts aggressive violence into defense.
Most people on the Internet tend to “stick with their own kind”; for example, liberals read only sites like Daily Kos. However, when they venture out and run into those of different persuasions, you always see a battle of competing arguments, and the...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Responding to the door bell, there was a young gal with a vaguely eastern European accent at the door, who immediately started a spiel about how she is a member of Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group, and how they are working on a campaign to stop overuse of antibiotics by farmers. Normally I would enjoy talking with a cute lady, but I was grumpy...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It used to be that the Confederate flag (correctly known as the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia) was not respectable. It was found on dirty pickup trucks, hanging in bars, and painted on the roof of that orange car in “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which was about as silly a show as one could find. The intelligentsia and the chattering...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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A thought experiment is a useful device for getting down to the truth of things. For example, Einstein discovered the Special Theory of Relativity through a series of thought experiments; certainly back in those days, there weren’t many trains actually running near the speed of light!
I noticed in another forum, in one of my discussions about rights...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It took me a long, long time to figure out how important self interest was, in motivating people. It’s essentially all there is. Humans do not appear to have much of a natural in-born tendency toward virtues such as truth or decency.
As a parent, I try to warn my son about this; but he thinks I am being too cynical. I suspect that, even though we...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s been noted many times, that to obtain liberty, the first and most important thing that must be freed is one’s own mind. I don’t know who first recognized and stated it. Of course the reverse is true as well; the most important thing for the ruling class to do is to enslave people's minds. And the way that is done is to make those...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It is clearly fun to make fun of people. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be such a popular pastime.
One can imagine why we are prone to this kind of behavior. For example, in the old days, if you wanted to slaughter another tribe and steal their women and take all their stuff, dehumanizing them first was eminently sensible. It erases all inhibitions...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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There seems to be a lot of confusion on this point. Many people believe they are living in a state of liberty, while others don’t think so. How can you know for sure? I have devised a simple test that, I believe, can be used to determine when you have liberty.
I am here following the distinction that some use, between freedom and liberty:...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Anarchy is often all around us, yet we do not see it. Perhaps we have been conditioned by the state propaganda organs too well. One recent event, perhaps the most significant anarchic event ever, was the huge ramp-up in sales of military-pattern rifles starting on Obama's election in November 2008 and tapering back down to normal in the...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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The sign in the window said, “No Firearms Allowed Inside”.
First thing that came to my mind was, “Great, now what am I supposed to do? Leave my gun out here lying on the sidewalk?” My next thought was, “I am trying to do business with morons.”
I was in front of the local office of my ISP provider, a company...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I vaguely remember when I first discovered logical fallacies (hint: it was not in a government school); I recall being thrilled that there were some boundaries for argumentation that could be used to reject some poor arguments and help find the truth of things. I have long used Stephen Downes’ site as a particularly good exposition of them, since it...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Sometimes I think people of a certain mindset (*cough* “conservatives” *cough*) would feel lost without someone to fear. Pick any forum with a good crop of ‘em, utter the word “Muslim,” and watch the whole lot turn into instant collectivists, the very people they claim to oppose. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the ruling class...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Yet again the puppet masters have gotten all the puppets jumping about in a frenzy. It makes me wonder whether there is actually reason to get exercised about this bill.
Certainly, the notion that the U.S. government will protect the Internet from attacks is absurd, given that the source of all the most serious attacks (of which CISPA...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was listening to Stewart Rhodes' stirring speech in Connecticut and finding myself in (reluctant) disagreement.
He was talking about all the sacrifices made by men in WWII and other wars, and yet how their efforts were betrayed by the destruction of liberty back home.
Now setting aside for the moment the question of what those men were actually...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Have you ever noticed how many people have bought into this notion that America is a republic? It’s amusing in a forum to use the word “democracy”; invariably, someone huffily states we have a Constitutional Republic, as if that statement closed the matter for good. How silly is that?
The Wikipedia article for the...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I don’t know what it is about the word “property.” Every time I think about it, the thought seems to include such state baggage as titles, and places to record those titles like county courthouses, and arguments in court over who owns it, and state regulations on transferring it, and even taxes! The latest big fuss over “...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
I had earlier addressed the question of tolerance of anarchists, in this article. At some point, it occurred to me to actually ask the question. After all, we have these wonderful forum tools that include polls!
I went to my favorite gun forum, one I recommend, by the way, Oleg Volk’s Gun Rights Media. On a sub-board called “Ethics...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I just got done reading another article whacking the practice of voting. This one declares that voting is a fool's game. One begins to wonder if this is a productive tack. How many voters are convinced by such arguments? Aren’t we just “preaching to the choir”? Are we hacking at the branches of evil, or striking the root?
I have made...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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The typical arguments about race are so common and predictable, I wonder why people can’t find something different to talk about.
It’s funny how similar the two seemingly disparate positions are, if you think about it.
The so-called “liberal” position, AKA “White Man’s Burden,” is in agreement with what “...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Carl Watner wrote an interesting article, back in 2000, concerning an apparent conflict between government by consent, and the difficulty of secession. At first glance, it appears that if government exists through the consent of the people, then secession should be possible and easy. Yet that is not the case today, or ever. How can that be?
He writes,
﻿...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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By now it seems everything that could be said about Newtown, has already been said--multiple times in some cases. Here’s an attempt to bring something new to the discussion.
Why are people horrified? When I sit back and think about this, a few things come to mind.
First is the thing that virtually every parent must feel: the dread that they may...

By Paul Bonneau
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What if you woke up one morning, no longer believing you had a "right to life" - whatever you mean by that? How would your life change?
Some have contended that one would immediately commit suicide! Or they somehow imagine that people would no longer defend their lives from killers, passively awaiting their fate. Of course...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was talking to a friend who was worried and depressed about NDAA and “rendition” and that sort of thing. She had been reading a lot on lewrockwell.com (or maybe even prisonplanet.com). It struck me that this normally-happy woman was actually worried, as if she feared imminent arrest.
Imagine you own the most reliable car in the world;...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
Nor are there any minarchists or anarchists.
In this brouhaha stirred up by Per Bylund, some strange lines of argument have appeared. Here is an example:
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﻿"There are a huge number who would reject abolishing the state while consenting to leave us alone." [quoted from previous comment]
That is redundant...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
I wonder how many of our readers ever participated in an election, in which their vote was the decisive one? The chances are pretty small, mathematically. But they are actually even smaller than the math predicts!
Let’s imagine a race between Statist Candidate A and Statist Candidate B, and in the vote count, they differ by only...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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Following a comment from the editor, it occurred to me to take a look at the split between those who advocate nonviolent resistance to tyranny, and those who would not thus limit themselves. Is it actually necessary for this split to exist?
I should first say, that anyone who has a favorite online source that addresses this issue,...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
Every once in a while, I get tired of arguments around here, trying in some way or other to justify freedom and liberty. One can go overboard with this stuff.
After all, does one need a PhD in Philosophy to understand freedom? Of course not. Everybody already understands it. It’s just doing whatever the Hell you want to do. No justification is...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
I wrote up a recipe for achieving Panarchy, and posted it on a forum frequented by anarchists. It was intended as a focus for discussion more than an actual plan of events. This is a slight re-write, version 2.
*What is Panarchy?*
Panarchy is that condition, when people are affected by, and can only affect, those political institutions and structures in a...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was reading an article about Roger Williams. The more I learn about him, the more impressed I become.
﻿"Roger Williams was not a man out of time. He belonged to the 17th Century and to Puritans in that century. Yet he was also one of the most remarkable men of his or any century. With absolute faith in the literal truth of the Bible and in his...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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It’s just funny what a complete cluster-f*ck government can make of something if you simply let them have their way. I suppose that is normal with all parasitic organisms; they could live just fine if they knew when to stop their depredations--but they never do. They literally cannot avoid the self-destructive course.
The latest...

By Paul Bonneau.
Exclusive to STR
The tenacity of the meme, that government is here to help us and protect us, is hard to understand. All evidence throughout history points in the opposite direction--that government is here to prey on us, and that if there is anything we need protection from, it is our own governments. Why do people cling to this harmful meme?
A...